First One Missing (26 page)

Leanne stopped and glanced at her unwelcome companion.

‘If you are withholding any information that could help solve a crime, you could be up on a charge of obstructing the course of justice or impeding a police investigation. I would advise you to think very seriously.’

Sally made a dismissive gesture with her hand as if the prospect of a criminal charge was a minor irritation.

‘I’m not withholding anything. It’s just information that
might
prove to be helpful, but I won’t be able to tell without seeing how it fits into place with other pieces. It’s like a jigsaw. Do you see? One piece in isolation is next to useless.’

Leanne wasn’t in the mood for this. It didn’t help that the other woman’s immaculate all-white outfit – tight-fitting linen trousers, silk shirt, high wedge sandals – was making her feel so crumpled and scruffy in comparison.

‘If you have any information, Sally, then you can pass it on to me or to someone else on the investigation, but I can’t enter into any tit-for-tat information sharing, you know that. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

She turned her back and walked off, smoothing the creases out of her too-tight navy-blue skirt as she moved.

‘So you don’t want to know about Nemo then?’

Leanne stopped in her tracks before slowly turning round, her mind racing. What did Sally know about Nemo? How had she found out?

‘I don’t have time to talk to you,’ she said, before adding grudgingly, ‘At least not now.’

Sally Freeland smiled like she’d won a victory and Leanne pinched the inside of her wrist to stop herself saying something she’d regret.

‘How about later this afternoon?’

‘Yes. OK. But it’ll have to be north – Hampstead or Highgate.’

Sally’s eyebrows rose as if Leanne had given something away.

‘No probs. Whatever suits.’

The skin on Leanne’s wrist smarted as she turned and walked away.

30

Emma clicked on the link that was minimized at the bottom of her laptop so that it sprang once more into life.

A source close to the investigation has revealed that in the wake of the latest tragic discovery police are now very interested in the movements of a family member of one of the victims. The source wouldn’t reveal any more details but says the police are acting on a tip-off from a member of the public.

Movements of a family member of one of the victims? What did that even mean? Ever since Fiona Botsford had texted her at eight thirty-five that morning asking if she’d read the
Chronicle
, the questions had been going round and round in Emma’s head. Which victim? Which family member? Her unquiet brain ran through them all, over and over. Simon Hewitt? But then why not Daniel Purvis? How come he never came to any of the support meetings? She’d always found that strange. Mark Botsford. He was so quiet, almost preternaturally self-controlled. She’d never seen him cry. She kept running through the list of people, afraid to stop thinking for fear of what she’d then have to face. The one man she hadn’t included in her list. Guy.

She kept remembering how Leanne had asked all those questions about Guy when they’d met at King’s Cross. And what about this woman he’d been sneaking off early from work to see? Could that have anything to do with it?

She had a flashback to the first time she’d ever seen Guy, when she was helping her friend Ade move into a shared house in Brixton and the door of the neighbouring room had opened and there had been this man in an old T-shirt and a pair of tartan pyjama bottoms. Struggling under the weight of a cardboard box she’d hardly noticed him and then he’d looked at her with those green eyes and something had dropped away inside her. And now the memories were coming faster. Their first holiday where they’d borrowed his cousin’s ancient camper van and they’d broken down somewhere in the Dordogne and had to spend three nights in a
pension
that smelled like cabbage soup and there’d been nothing to do but lie in bed on the bobbly nylon sheets and laugh and fuck and eat croissants smuggled in from the bakery down the road. The day after Jemima was born, when he’d arrived, red-faced and out of breath, bursting through the door of the ward the very second visiting hours started, having run all the way from the tube, desperate to see them both again.

Those memories weren’t lies. That Guy existed. He still existed. So why wouldn’t these doubts just leave her alone?

By 11.30 that morning she couldn’t bear it any more. She picked up the phone and dialled the number that still produced a tight, painful knot in her stomach. By one o’clock she was in the car and by twenty-five past, she was sitting under an umbrella in the cramped courtyard of a pub. At the next table a group of medics from the sprawling hospital up the hill were drinking Jägermeister shots. Emma hoped they’d just come off shift rather than being about to start.

‘Sorry I’m late. It’s been a pig of a morning.’

Leanne burst into the courtyard, her cheeks the exact shade of pink as the short-sleeved cotton top which had come untucked from her navy skirt.

‘I got you an orange juice. I assumed you wouldn’t be drinking on duty.’

Leanne glanced wistfully over at the Jägermeister table and Emma wondered whether she should have got her a glass of wine after all.

‘Look, Leanne. I’m just going to come straight to the point. I—’

‘I think I can guess what prompted this, Emma. You read the snippet in the
Chronicle
, didn’t you?’

Emma nodded, her mouth suddenly dry.

‘I have to know. Is it Guy you’re investigating?’

Leanne put down the orange juice she’d been sipping through a black bendy straw so that she could reach out and put her hand over Emma’s.

‘I knew that’s what you’d be thinking, after our conversation the other day. I’m going to be honest with you, Emma, in a way I couldn’t be the last time we met because I was under orders, but my boss now thinks you have the right to know, and maybe you can even help us get to the bottom of what’s going on. Do you mind if I tape this?’

Leanne was already reaching down into the outside pocket of her bag from where she eventually produced an old-fashioned mini tape recorder.

‘I have got one of the digital ones, but I can’t work it out,’ she explained.

Then she caught sight of Emma’s face.

‘It’s just a formality, Emma. This isn’t an official interview, but I need to record it just in case it becomes part of our investigation. Do you understand? Otherwise, I’m afraid, I won’t be able to give you the information you need.’

‘OK,’ Emma said, but her voice was hoarse and gravelly.

‘Righto. Let’s just make sure this thing is working. Can you say something?’

‘It feels like I’m stuck inside a made-for-TV drama or something.’

Leanne smiled and clicked the machine off, rewound and played it back.

Feels like I’m stuck inside a made-for-TV drama or something
, came Emma’s tinny voice.

‘Perfect. The thing is, Emma, as you know, Guy has been finishing work at peculiar times and going AWOL, only he hasn’t been seeing another woman. He’s been sitting in his car outside primary schools. Mostly one in St John’s Wood, but we’ve also found out he’s been spotted at a couple of others in the area.’

‘I don’t understand. That’s nowhere near where our daughters go to school—’

‘Exactly. That’s why I was hoping you’d be able to shed some light on what he might be doing?’

Emma shook her head slowly. She swallowed, suddenly afraid she was going to vomit right there and then. Something occurred to her. ‘Have you asked him? Have the police talked to Guy?’

The thought that he could have been called into the station and hadn’t told her was unbearable.

‘We’re talking to him right now as it happens.’

‘So that’s why you insisted on meeting here rather than at the station?’

Leanne nodded. ‘It shouldn’t take too long. We just need him to clear it up for us.’

But Emma’s thoughts were whirling around in her brain and she could hardly focus on what her companion was saying. Why would Guy be lurking outside primary schools?

‘Emma.’ Leanne leaned right in so she was inches away from Emma’s face. Her eyes, close up, were tinged with pink as if she hadn’t been sleeping. ‘You know that when Tilly died we tested Guy’s DNA against the sample found at the scene of Megan Purvis’s murder. It wasn’t a match. Keep bearing that in mind. Guy is not suspected of anything. This is just a formality.’

But on the way home the doubts built up in Emma’s head until she thought she would explode. What if the thing that had come between her and Guy wasn’t grief but guilt? Paedophilia was a compulsion, wasn’t it? A disease? Maybe he couldn’t help himself. The sudden pain that shot up her side at the thought of her two surviving daughters stopped her in her tracks.

By the time she reached her house, Emma was having difficulty breathing. Though she was panting, she didn’t seem to be able to draw enough oxygen into her lungs. At first she assumed Guy wasn’t back from the police station yet as she couldn’t see his car anywhere, but then she spotted it further down the street.

Approaching the front door, she wondered if she had the nerve to go in. There was a painful stitch in her side and her heart was pounding uncontrollably. But she knew it was less than an hour until the girls were home from school so she forced herself to take out her keys.

Guy was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Emma noticed with a shock how grey his hair was getting at the back. He still had his work clothes on – his shoulders in his grey suit jacket were slumped.

He didn’t look up, though he must have known she was standing in the doorway. For a moment there was a silence that settled over the two of them like a net.

Then: ‘I’ve been with Leanne. I know you were called in by the police.’

Silence.

‘Tell me. Tell me why you’ve been sneaking out of work to go and lurk outside primary schools.’

More silence.

‘You owe me an explanation, you bastard. I need to know if you did something to our daughter.’

That got a reaction all right. Guy’s head shot up.

‘What? What did you just say?’

‘You heard.’ But the conviction was already draining from her voice. ‘I just want to know what’s going on. It was bad enough when I thought you were seeing another woman but now I know you’ve been hanging around watching little girls come out of school. Day after day after day. Why were you there?’

‘Because I miss her!’ The words tore from Guy’s throat as if ripped out of him against his will. To her astonishment, Emma saw that he was crying, tears that fell messily from his reddened eyes, splashing on the blond-wood table.

‘I go and I sit and I watch the gate and I imagine that she’s going to come through it any moment. And I watch the girls and the way they talk and laugh and carry their paintings so carefully to show their parents, and I imagine she’s one of them and for five or ten minutes I convince myself it never happened.’

‘So why not go to our daughters’ school? Why not go and watch the children you still have instead of a whole bunch of strangers?’

‘Because I don’t want Caitlin and Jemima to see me like this. I don’t want anyone to see me like this. I don’t want you to see me like this. It’s been two whole years. I’m supposed to be coping.’

Emma looked at her weeping husband and felt something shifting and dissolving inside. The feeling panicked her. The barrier between her and Guy had been there so long it was part of her emotional framework. How would she keep holding herself upright without it?

‘Who says you’re supposed to be coping? Who do you think will judge you if you fall apart?’

Guy gazed at her through his overspilling eyes. And then a noise came from out of nowhere like the cry made by foxes that occasionally woke them up in the dead of night. A terrible, inhuman roar, and then she was across the floor and standing beside him and he had his arms around her waist and his face buried in her stomach and she was stroking his head and telling him it was OK, it was OK, it was OK. And for the first time since it had happened, for the first time in two years, she forced herself to believe this might be true.

31

Suzy’s house was in the Bermuda triangle where three different North London districts met. They all had Green in their name, though there was nothing green about any of them. The terraced houses on Suzy’s road were either greyish brick or painted the maroon colour favoured by Greeks of a certain age or done up in fake stone cladding. A double mattress had been dumped on the corner. Jason wrinkled up his nose at the sight of the large brown stain in the middle. People were disgusting.

The houses in this street were mostly rented out and carved up into bedsits. Next door to Suzy’s house one lot of tenants had clearly recently moved out. The front yard was piled with black bin bags, many of them split, the contents strewn all over the path. There was a bright-orange flannel slipper on the pavement just outside and Jason kicked it back in through the gate.

Outside Suzy’s door, he paused before ringing the bell. He squinted at his reflection in the diamond-shaped panel of the white plastic front door, with its fake leaded glass. His mouth was dry and he tried to swallow. The palms of his hands felt damp with sweat.

Suzy’s house was a riot of soft furnishings in various vibrant colours and prints. The cushions on the sofa they passed were red, as was the kettle, while the toaster and the pedal bin were bright blue. Sitting at the kitchen table he could feel the beginnings of a headache throbbing at his temples.

‘Shame you couldn’t get here earlier,’ Suzy said, perching on his knee and putting her arms around his neck. ‘Bethany is about to get home from school. I thought I told you she gets home later on Thursdays on account of street dance. We could have … you know …’

She nuzzled into his neck. The pain in his head intensified.

‘Sorry. I got held up at the gym.’

‘Show us your muscles then.’ Suzy pushed her hands with their bright-yellow nails up the sleeve of his T-shirt and squeezed his biceps with her fingers.